We are requesting funds in partial support of the Biopolymers Gordon Conference to be held June 18-23, 2000, at Salve Regina College in Newport, Rhode Island, USA. The requested funds will mainly be used to pay travel expenses for speakers attending the conference, with a smaller portion allocated to conference fees for post-doctoral and/or student speakers, who have been selected from submitted abstracts. The purpose of this conference is to facilitate the dissemination of ideas and information within the community of investigators who seek to understand and predict the properties of biological macromolecules. This community includes the physicists, mathematicians and chemists who study the physical properties of proteins and nucleic acids, and the biochemists and biologists who put those observations in biological context. The structure, dynamics, and functions of these biological molecules have been the focus of this Gordon Conference since its inception in 1964, making it a unique forum where these disciplines converge. In this year 2000 conference, we seek to create an exciting and enlivened atmosphere for the discussion of experimental and theoretical results on nucleic acids, proteins, and their interactions, with the synthesis of these results culminating in our ability to model these systems. To this end, we are engaging session chairpersons who bring innovation and breadth to these fields, with the charge to identify the next challenges this community will face. Since this conference has been oversubscribed for past years, we will endeavor to select participants whose past contributions and future promise make them enthusiastic and thoughtful participants in this meeting. We will thereby actively promote an open and dynamic environment for discussion of the formal lectures and the poster presentations.